Knowledge Is Power

Inside the National Automotive History Collection

Feature Article from Hemmings Motor News

Great automotive museums all, ordinarily, have one common element: They're full of cars. Great ones, scarce ones, obscure ones, sometimes even common ones. This museum is different. It houses one of the world's great automotive collections, and yet its inventory doesn't include a single motor vehicle.
We are referring to one of automotive history's best, but arguably less-known, treasures of the past. The National Automotive History Collection at the Detroit Public Library is widely regarded as one of most impressive and comprehensive, and has been a highly valued resource for years. The bulk of people in this hobby, however, may not be fully aware of its existence, or at least, aware of the extent of its holdings. They are enormous, running to an estimated 600,000 pieces. This collection in Detroit, remarkably, predates the auto industry itself.
Detroit, at the northern end of what was once called New France, was already an industrial titan as the 19th century drew to a close, due in part to its status as a seaport at the confluence of two of the Great Lakes, Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River. During the late years of the 1800s, the Detroit Public Library was already collecting documentation on modes of transportation that preceded the automobile, with the intention of eventually organizing them into a single holding. These included vehicles that were either common to or indigenous to Detroit, including the likes of steam road vehicles, steam and naptha-powered watercraft, and even wind-powered skiffs and such, the last of which were typically seen on Lake St. Clair during the frigid winters.
With the dawn of the automotive age, the library expanded its efforts to include printed items on horseless carriages, starting with its acquisition of an original copy of John Henry Knight's Notes on Motor Carriages, which was first published in London in 1896. In the ensuing years, the library shifted the focus of the collection to concentrate more fully on cars and other current road vehicles. A special effort was made, and still continues, to accumulate engineering studies and other, related papers that would be beneficial to technical designers and other researchers. The library has benefited during the collection's history from numerous major donations of material by American auto manufacturers, with collection curator Mark Patrick noting the particular beneficence of General Motors, which has been a regular contributor since the World War I years.
Another key benefactor of the library's collection was D. Cameron Peck, who was the scion of a wealthy Chicago dynasty that provided bulk dairy products to that metropolitan area for many decades. Peck was a very early collector of historic automobiles, well before the practice had attained full-fledged hobby status. He favored the Ruxton and the Minerva, and served as national president of the Antique Automobile Club of America in 1951. Today, part of the Road America course at Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, is named in his memory. Peck amassed a massive trove of automotive literature during his lifetime. When an industry group that had bought it donated it to the library, it did so with the stipulation that the library also had to accept the services of George Risley, who kept the collection for Peck, and who became the National Automotive History Collection's first curator.
Today's collection includes manufacturer literature, photos, magazines, drawings and more than 18,000 books. It's housed in the Rose and Robert Skillman Branch on Gratiot Avenue, which includes a reading room hung with period automotive paintings. The collection handles about 20,000 inquiries per year, from elementary-school pupils to journalists and hobbyists looking for restoration data. A daily use pass is available for out-of-town visitors. Information is available by calling 313-628-2851 or by visiting www.detroit.lib.mi.us/nahc/.
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This article originally appeared in the April, 2007 issue of Hemmings Motor News.